Directors vying for the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or

The roll call of directors in the race for the top prize at the 2009 Cannes film festival is heavy on the past masters and festival favourites, but there are also some surprises. Xan Brooks introduces them

Andrea Arnold
Dartford-born Arnold kicks off our guide to the directors vying for the top prize at the 2009 Cannes film festival. She has gone from kids' TV presenter to Oscar-winning short-film-maker to Cannes darling, scooping the jury prize for her 2006 debut feature, Red Road. Her second, Fish Tank, makes her one of two Brits in competition for this year's Palme d'Or

Lou Ye
The Chinese film-maker so incensed his country's authorities with his last Cannes offering, 2006's Tiananmen Square-themed Summer Palace, that he was promptly slapped with a five-year ban. He shot Spring Fever illicitly, under the radar

Jane Campion
The Kiwi film-maker remains the only female director to win the Palme d'Or - taking the top prize for The Piano back in 1993. Her latest, the British-backed Bright Star, charts the doomed love affair between the poet John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne

Park Chan-wook
Will the lofty judges consider handing Cannes's top honour to a vampire horror movie from South Korea? That is the question fluttering – like a bat – around the head of Park, creator of the Vengeance trilogy and its searing centrepiece, Oldboy

Jacques Audiard
Flying the flag for the homeland, Audiard's Cannes contender, A Prophet, reportedly charts the rise and fall of a Corsican gangster born into the projects. His previous films include the acclaimed Read My Lips, A Self Made Hero and The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Ang Lee
One of a number of big hitters lined up for this year's festival, Lee is in competition with the hippie saga Taking Woodstock. The Taiwan-born film-maker scored a global hit with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and scooped the best director Oscar for Brokeback Mountain

Johnnie To
The mainstay of the Hong Kong action genre returns to the Croisette with Vengeance, which casts Johnny Hallyday as a killer chef. Quentin Tarantino hailed To's 2005 drama Election as "the best film of the year"; now these two directors are pitted against each other in their quest for the Palme d'Or. It's like a Johnnie To script come to life

Brillante Mendoza
The Filipino director has been fast-tracked for Cannes glory. His last picture, the gritty Serbis, competed for the Palme d'Or in 2008. Twelve months later he's in the running again with Kinatay, which spins the tale of a gang of hitmen

Ken Loach
The other great British challenger for Cannes honours needs no introduction. Still going strong after four decades of film-making, Loach took the Palme d'Or with 2006's The Wind That Shakes the Barley. His latest, Looking For Eric, is a social-realist fable about a Mancunian postman who receives some crucial life lessons from footballing legend Eric Cantona

Lars von Trier
What is the Danish maverick playing at? His Antichrist looks, on face value, like a run-of-the-mill horror flick, which surely means that it is anything but. But then Von Trier has a track record in ruffling Cannes feathers. His Dancer in the Dark provoked boos and whistles when it won the Palme d'Or in 2000

Pedro Almodóvar
He was favourite to win the Palme d'Or with Volver back in 2006. Now the Spanish auteur gets another bite at the cherry with Broken Embraces, a lush film-noir starring his favourite actor, Penélope Cruz

Marco Bellocchio
This veteran Italian director made one of the great debuts with the turbulent Fists in the Pocket way back in 1965 and has been working steadily ever since. Many feel he is well overdue a big Cannes prize and Vincere – charting the rise and fall of Mussolini's wife – may just be the film to achieve it

Quentin Tarantino
He won the Palme d'Or for Pulp Fiction and his appearance on the Croisette is always guaranteed to whip up a storm. Here he comes with Inglourious Basterds, in which Brad Pitt leads a team of GIs on a hunt for Nazi scalps. There will be blood ...

Alan Resnais
Make way for the grand old man of the competition, 86 last birthday. The New Wave auteur first contested the Palme d'Or with his debut feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour. Now 50 years and a few arthouse classics (Last Year at Marienbad, Providence) later, he's back in the running with Les Herbes Folles

Xavier Giannoli
The French director won rave reviews three years back with The Singer, showcasing a bravura performance from Gerard Depardieu. His shot at Cannes glory comes courtesy of In the Beginning, a romantic thriller about a professional con artist at work in smalltown France

Michael Haneke
Might this be Haneke's year? The lupine, gimlet-eyed Austrian was the hot favourite to win the Palme d'Or for Hidden in 2005 and scooped the grand prix four years earlier for The Piano Teacher. His latest, The White Ribbon, installs a rural German school as a breeding ground for fascism. The fact that Isabelle Huppert – the star of two Haneke movies – is jury president won't hurt his chances either

Elia Suleiman
Acclaimed for his lugubrious line in social comedy, the Palestinian film-maker took the jury prize in 2002 with Divine Intervention. Now Suleiman is back with The Time That Remains, a family saga that spans seven turbulent decades in the history of his homeland

Gaspar Noé
The controversial French director whipped up a bona-fide storm at Cannes in 2002 with his rape drama Irréversible. Enter the Void suggests that age has not mellowed him, dishing out a tale of brutal murder and sibling love gone sour

Tsai Ming-Liang
He is one of the leading lights of Taiwanese cinema, responsible for the harsh, poetic visions of The River and The Wayward Cloud. But with Face, Tsai is looking further afield, shooting a film-within-a-film in Paris with a cast of redoubtable French players, including Jeanne Moreau, Mathieu Amalric and Fanny Ardant

Isabel Coixet
Spanish-born Coixet could be the dark horse of this year's race. She shot the English-language My Life Without Me, and earned rave reviews for last year's Elegy, with Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz. Map of the Sounds of Tokyo sounds unusual if nothing else: it recounts the tale of a female Japanese assassin who moonlights as a fishmonger